タグ: ジャズ・コンポーザーズ・アライアンス・オーケストラ

翻訳中・・
Darrell Katz’ compositions unfold like suspense films, pregnant with anticipation, marked by unexpected twists and turns and exotic panoramas, packed with glorious collisions, barely skirted disasters and triumphant comings-together.

You may indeed hear textures and harmonies reminiscent of the sounds injected by big-band composers and arrangers into Hollywood scores in the 50s and 60s, bringing jazz rhythms into soundtrack music while taking extreme liberties with the conventions of jazz as dance music through the use of 20th century classical devices. These writers travelled a different route out of swing and the American popular song than did such core jazz innovators as Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus – whom Katz cites as among his major influences – but took equal advantage of the opportunity to broaden the palette of jazz.

In the work of Katz and the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, these two currents flow together in a way that highlights what 21st century jazz musicians can do. The musicians display the lightning comprehension, broad ensemble perspective and razor sharp precision of studio cats while remaining continuously ready to turn left into the post-free jazz, any-parameter-for-improvisation-goes world of now. Spectacular crystalline ensemble textures dissolve in high-energy jazz bashes and re-emerge, transformed, on the other side.

Many of the key JCA players are significant bandleaders and composers in their own right, whose ensemble vision equips them with the necessary tools. Members range from Jim Hobbs (of the free-swinging Fully Celebrated trio) to Phil Scarff (of the Indian-jazz quintet Natraj) to Allan Chase (whose credentials run from vintage cool to post-Coltrane) – and that’s just 3/5ths of the woodwind section! Other players include top call trumpet players Mike Peipman and Gary Bohan; fire breathing trombonists David Harris and Bob Pilkington, venerable educator and low brass specialist Bill Lowe, Either/Orchestra drummer Pablo Bencid and many others, equally talented. Extraordinary vocalist Rebecca Shrimpton mirrors the band, displaying the ability to sing complex extended melodies with a relaxed jazz feel and to make lyricist Paula Tatarunis’ free verse sound conversational.

As if Katz and the JCA aren’t juggling enough elements, Wallflower also dredges the grittiest of blues, as embod- ied by singer/organist Mike Finnegan, featured on a fractured Hoochie Coochie Man and a somewhat more conventional Tuff Luck Blues. Finnegan has an astonishing list of credits including work with Jimi Hendrix, Joe Cocker, Etta James, Crosby Stills and Nash, Dave Mason, Buddy Guy, Manhattan Transfer, Taj Mahal, Michael McDonald, Maria Muldaur, Peter Frampton, Cher, Ringo Starr, Leonard Cohen, Tower of Power, Rod Stewart, and Tracy Chapman. The coda to the album here is The Red Blues, a haunting, bluesy ballad featuring Shrimpton and the JCA Sax Quartet, dedicated to one of Katz’s favorite musicians Julius Hemphill.

The JCAO has been playing the music of a small but diverse group of Boston composers, including Katz, since 1985, as well as special concerts by such greats as Julius Hemphill, Sam Rivers and Oliver Lake. Wallflower is the group’s eighth release, and first for Accurate. This December marks their 25th anniversary
CD Release Party at the Regattabar Cambridge MA October 12
The Jazz Composers Alliance was founded in 25 years ago to support, develop and promote the art of music composition in the jazz idiom. The Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra was founded to help realize that goal, and it has been a fixture on Boston’s creative music scene since its first performance in December 1985. The JCA has released 7 critically acclaimed CDs. The group has performed (and on a few occasions, recorded with) an illustrious group of guest performer/composers, including Sam Rivers, Julius Hemphill, Dave Holland, Maria Schneider, Henry Threadgill, Steve Lacy and Oliver Lake. Drawing on influences that span the history of jazz and the world’s musical traditions, the JCA Orchestra has brought together a huge palette of sounds, struc- tures and concepts.

Darrell Katz, director of the Jazz Composers Alliance, helped to found the organization after being impressed by the success of other composer’s collective groups. Originally from Topeka, Kansas, Katz has lived in the Boston area since 1975. The Boston Phoenix calls him “… one of Boston’s most ambitious and provocative jazz composers.”
“25 years is a long time to keep a creative jazz orchestra going” says Katz,“but what’s remarkable is not so much that we’ve survived but that we’ve never stopped trying to keep moving the music forward.”
Of Katz’s last disc, The SAME THING, critics say:
“This is music for mind and soul” –The Montreal Gazette
“Over his career and small discography, bandleader Darrell Katz has forged an identity as a progres- sive and creative orchestrator of new music in a way that few can claim. Beyond the modern signatures of Gil Evans and Maria Schneider, the style of Katz is best known not only for jagged edges and vast colors of the musical spectrum as much as direct correlations to tradition.” –All Music, Michael G. Nastos
“The Same Thing is a bold and impassioned musical statement from a composer who revels in the myriad possibilities afforded by a talented and flexible big band. One cannot help but admire Katz and the JCA for their dedication and commitment to creative music.” –Jazz Review.com
“Crazy, avant-garde, third-stream, god-knows-what big band composition that manages to stay in touch with what Julius Hemphill called “the hard blues.” –Lerterland, David R. Adler

Tracks:

1. I Like The Sunrise
2. Red Blue
3. A Wallflower In The Amazon
4. Hoochie Coochie Man/All Bark and No Bite
5. Visiting My Aunties
6. Tuff Luck Blues
7. For Our Sins
8. The Red Blues

1. December 30, 1994
2. Everybody Loves Ray Charles
3. I’m Me and You’re Not Ha Ha
4. Like A Wind
5. The Same Thing
6. Lemmings

JAZZ COMPOSERS ALLIANCE ORCHESTRA SHINES ON IN, THRU, AND OUT
“Some of the most exciting writing around for the big jazz band.” – Steven Loewy, All Music Guide

In, Thru, and Out (Cadence Jazz), the fourth release by the Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, showcases new work by JCA resident composers Laura Andel, David Harris, Darrell Katz, and Warren Sanders. Recorded live in concert in 2001, the album features inspired versions of six compositions. Each piece is written in the composer’s distinctive voice, but all of the music reflects a shared commitment to exploring the potential of composing for improvisers and expanding the jazz big band vocabulary.

This shared vision binds these works together, despite the extraordinarily wide stylistic range they cover. The title track, by trombonist-composer David Harris, integrates free improvisation, graphic scores, and conventional notation into a single piece. Harris’ other contribution “Testify,” offers a startling contrast-a hard swinging, Hammond B3-powered homage to the gospel music tradition. Laura Andel also offers two contrasting pieces. “El Tiempo” plays with the listener’s sense of time as a haunting melody floats over different tempos and is subjected to a variety of orchestrations. The buoyant “Caruaru” weaves together a bubbling Brazilian folk theme with original material that takes the folk elements in new directions. Darrell Katz’s four-part “Hemphill” is a reworking of a saxophone quartet piece that plays with jazz big band conventions as it pays tribute to the late saxophonist-composer Julius Hemphill. Katz incorporates rich melodic invention, call and response, the blues, and other jazz elements into an extended form that includes a setting of a poem by Paula Tatarunis. In “Bats,” Warren Senders sinuous melodies fuse jazz with an international blend of African, Indian, and Indonesian elements. Senders also contributes “The Metric Dozens,” an ingenious take off on boogie- piano conventions that generates unpredictable interactions between soloists, horn sections, and rhythm section.

The orchestra draws on some of Boston’s most accomplished improvisers, several of whom are bandleaders in their own right. Not only do they create a unified and distinctive orchestral sound, but their ranks include first rate soloists. Katz’s “Hemphill” showcases a number of the band’s stellar soloists, including trumpeters Mike Peipman and Keiichi Hashimoto, trombonist Bob Pilkington, saxophonist Jeff Hudgins, guitarist Norm Zocher, and drummer Harvey Wirht. Composer-trombonist Harris solos with revival meeting fervor on “Testify.” On Andel’s “Caruaru,” alto saxophonist Jim Hobbs digs into the propulsive groove in his compelling and fiery improvisation. Tenor saxophonist Phil Scarff shows his versatility with an angular unsettling solo on “In, Thru, and Out,” and a gently melodious outing that flows with the Indian rhythms of “Bats.” Pianist Art Bailey has fun with his rollicking boogie-woogie variations on “The Metric Dozens.”

Since 1985, the Jazz Composers Alliance has supported and promoted composition in the jazz idiom in several ways. Through its resident ensemble, the JCA Orchestra, they have premiered more than 100 new works by JCA composers-in-residence and guest composers, including commissioned works from Muhal Richard Abrams, Marty Ehrlich, and Wayne Horvitz. Through the Signature Concert Series, they also have presented works by Sam Rivers, Julius Hemphill, Henry Threadgill, Dave Holland, and Steve Lacy, among many others. In addition to a regular concert schedule, since 1993 the JCA has administered the Julius Hemphill Composition Awards, an international competition that recognizes innovative work for both small and large ensembles. In 2001, the JCA instituted the Composers in the Classroom program, sending resident jazz composers into Boston-area elementary schools to help students develop and apply skills in composition and improvisation.

In, Thru, and Out proves that after nearly 20 years, the Jazz Composers Alliance is still one of the premiere showcases for exciting new music for large jazz ensembles.

Darrell Katz’s improvisational canata, The Death of Simone Weil (Innova), is among the most ambitious large-scale works for voice and jazz orchestra ever composed. Performed by Boston’s Jazz Composer’s Alliance Orchestra and singer Rebecca Shrimpton, Katz’s setting of poet Paula Tatarunis’ meditation on the life and death of philosopher Weil is remarkable for its lyrical clarity and power.

“There’s an impressive variety of textures, colors, and rhythm in all of the JCA’s collaborations, but it’s never attempted anything like Katz’s Simone Weil,” writes the Boston Phoenix’s Jon Garelick, who picked the album as one of the top 10 releases of 2003, “This work is eerie and moving, and even swinging.”

Katz’s melodic invention, his use of orchestral colors, harmony, and the underpinning of dance rhythms, all bring out nuances of meaning and feeling in the poem. “I was really into the idea of getting the melody, working with the text, and figuring out what to do with it,” Katz says. “I think the best model for what I wanted to do is the Tin Pan Alley composers. I wanted the words to line up with the melodies so it sounded very conversational. I wanted the text to be really clear and easy to understand.”

The music’s sensitivity to the sound and meaning of words manifests itself in ways both small and large. For instance, the light, bouncy sound of the words “Viana do Castelo” inspired the Latin rhythms in the opening moments of “Renault.” The blues that concludes that section of the six-part suite was suggested by the slavery imagery that links the Renault plant workers and the fishermen in the poem. The unity of words and music in the suite and the subtle shadings of thought and feeling it contains are beautifully captured by singer Rebecca Shrimpton. The soloists, including trombonist Bob Pilkington, guitarist Norm Zocher, and saxophonist Jeremy Udden, always work within the mood and structure of the piece, adding the immediacy of improvisation to work that is already deeply emotional.

Katz, a founder of Boston’s Jazz Composers Alliance and Orchestra, has synthesized a wide range of influences including modern classical, folk traditions, and the entire jazz legacy into a mature and personal compositional style. His work can be heard on previous JCA Orchestra releases-Flux, Dreamland, and In, Thru, and Out. His settings of the poetry of his wife Tatarunis, whose work has appeared in small presses such as Ploughshares and The Massachusetts Review, are found on the Jazz Composers Alliance Sax Quartet’s I’m Me and You’re Not (Brownstone, 1999) and the JCA Orchestra’s In, Thru, and Out (Cadence Jazz Records, 2003).

Since 1985, the Jazz Composers Alliance has supported and promoted composition in the jazz idiom in several ways. Through its resident ensemble, the JCA Orchestra, they’ve premiered more than 100 new works by JCA composers-in-residence and guest composers, including commissioned works from Muhal Richard Abrams, Marty Ehrlich, and Wayne Horvitz. Through the Signature Concert Series, they also have presented works by Sam Rivers, Julius Hemphill, Henry Threadgill, Dave Holland, and Steve Lacy, among many others. In addition to a regular concert schedule, since 1993 the JCA has administered the Julius Hemphill Composition Awards, an international competition that recognizes innovative work for both small and large ensembles. In 2001, the JCA instituted the Composers in the Classroom program, sending resident jazz composers into Boston-area elementary schools to help students develop and apply skills in composition and improvisation.

The Death of Simone Weil is a landmark recording for the Jazz Composer’s Allaince, JCA Orchestra, and composer Darrell Katz.